


Two Hearts Are Better Than One

by Elphen



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Arguing, Comforting, Eleventh Doctor Era, Gen, Hospitals, ICD, Insecurity, eleventh's brand of comforting, heart issues, thoughts and worries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:26:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elphen/pseuds/Elphen
Summary: A boy is in hospital, waiting on getting a sort ‘advanced pacemaker and defribilator’, an ICD, for his not quite functioning heart. He is scared of the operation the grown-ups claims he needs to have, scared of what it'll do and what it'll mean.Then he hears an odd noise coming from the wardrobe and meets a strange man in a bowtie who says that having two hearts is hardly something to be scared of.





	Two Hearts Are Better Than One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anotherwellkeptsecret](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=anotherwellkeptsecret).



> I needed to write this story as soon as I got the idea. Some of you know one of the reasons why :)  
> There shouldn't be anything triggery in here, despite the subject, but do tell me if you spot anything.  
> This is my very first stab at writing anything Doctor who, so apologies if that shows.  
> There have been no betas on this, mistakes are all mine.

It was night. It was quiet.

No, it wasn’t. His _bedroom_ was quiet at night, even if you could dimly hear the dog moving about in its wicker basket at the end of the hall and mum’s snoring in the big bedroom. There was a sort of muffle to everything, a blanket of calm and quiet that was soft and reassuring. The small amount of noise added to the quiet, somehow.

Here, though…here the noises didn’t help the quietness. Instead, even though there were fewer of them, they went against each other in a way that made each sound louder and shriller.

There was the murmur of voices from down the hall, some of them sounding very worried – he was good at telling when adults were worried. Something scraped across something else at odd intervals and the only other he was sharing the room with, who was a few beds over, was having some trouble breathing, the wheezing coming unevenly, despite the sleeping pills they’d given her.

All in all, it made an already not pleasant experience worse.

He didn’t want to be here. Even on the best of days, he hated being in hospital, and he’d been here a lot in the last year. Ever since they found out he had a…a…he couldn’t remember what the doctors had called it, but his nan had said ‘dicky ticker’. He liked that term. It sounded like the name for a bomb expert in an old movie.

He sometimes felt like one, too, when he had to wear that portable heart monitor thingie, which was always, really. The one where the electrode patches itched, and the cords were colour-coded. Shouldn’t you always cut the blue one? Or was it the red one?

The doctors said he had to be there, that it was for his own health and safety, and so of course, his parents agreed and repeated it to him when he pleaded to go home. He just wanted to go home.

“You can’t, sweetheart,” his mum had said the last time he’d begged, just before they’d had to leave for the evening. “You know you had another funny turn” – she always called it that, which was odd, because he’d looked up the term and it had nothing to do with hearts at all – “and the doctors are all gonna help you tomorrow, to make sure they don’t ever happen anymore.”

“Why didn’t they do that in the first place, then?” he’d asked. He’d felt it was more than a fair question to ask. “Why did I have to go in all those other times if they can fix it in one visit?”

His parents had hesitated at that. His mum had looked at the tower that was his dad, though he hadn’t looked much like the tower he remembered in the last year, and his dad had cleared his throat.

“Well, the thing is,” he’d begun, then paused. “The thing is, they wanted to be sure.”

“Sure about what?”

“Sure that there was nothing else they could do that’d help in the long run,” his dad had said, sounding funny as he did so. “You don’t just get one of those…those things right off the bat, y’know.  You get them for life, for a start, not to mention it could be dangerous – “

“Don’t go scaring him!” his mum had snapped at his dad. She never snapped at anyone. “You’ll be right as rain, love, and when you get back from…then we’ll be right there, waiting for you. I promise.” She’d given him a kiss on the forehead, like she always did.

Then they’d had to leave for the night, and he was left in the ward, all on his own. Apart from the girl in the other bed but she was out like a light because of the pills, so she didn’t count.

Now he lay there, in the not-quiet of the night, in his too-large hospital gown, unable to sleep, staring out in front of him and wondering what was going to happen to him.

Would it hurt? More than what he’d already been through? They had said it would a bit but not too much because they’d give him local anaesthetic and it’d be over in a tic, really. But grown-ups always lied about stuff like that, didn’t they? He supposed they thought they were being considerate. As though it wouldn’t hurt if you just pretended it wouldn’t.

That it would hurt wasn’t the worst part, though. That was the thought that they’d cut him open and put a metal heart inside of him, like the first step in a robotization process.

His breath hitched, and tears started falling, one after another. He didn’t want to become a robot. He liked being a boy.

His friends thought it was way cool. Or, they would have, if he’d told them. He hadn’t dared to, afraid of how they’d react. He’d seen what happened to kids that were different.

As he lay there, on his side, hyper-sensitive to every noise in the room, he thought he heard something odd. Odd even for a hospital at night.

It sounded…sounded a bit like when his uncle tried to drive his old Volvo with the handbrake still on, with a bit of his English teacher’s harsh coughs thrown in for good measure.

He listened, half-convinced he’d dozed off and dreamed it, until it came again, sounding, if possible, even worse than the first time.

Where was it coming from?

Curious, and far more interested in getting away from the room than he wanted to admit, he got up, careful not to make any more noise than he had to. Luckily, he’d had a lot of experience going past his parents’ bedroom to get sweets in the cupboard after bedtime.

He made his way, as quickly and quietly as he could so as not to alert anyone via the heart monitor, towards where he thought the noise had come from.

There was nothing out of the ordinary to see when he reached the darkened, and thankfully empty, hallway. Fearing that he’d lost it, he strained to listen.

He didn’t hear anything and there was nothing to see, either.

Dejected, he walked back to his bed.

He was just about to crawl back under the covers when he heard clanging from the inside of one of the patient wardrobes.

Nothing should be in there except clothes and musty linen. He’d checked.

“Hello?” he asked quietly as he walked closer to the door. There was no answer except for another soft bang. “Hello, is there someone there?”

The door started opening at that.

“Hello? Who’s asking hello?” came a voice, from someone who wasn’t yet quite visible. It sounded like a man, though.

The door opened the rest of the way, which revealed that it was a man. A man in odd clothes, like he’d stepped right out of those photos he’d seen of his great granddad and his brother when they were young, like the braces and the bowtie. Even then, it didn’t seem quite right, like he’d gotten wrong instructions on a few details. The boots, for example, looked all wrong. Those should be brogues.

The man looked at him with eyes that both seemed as old and wise as his gran’s and as young and mischievous as his little sister when she was causing trouble.

“Oh. Hello,” he said, sounding friendly and welcoming if a bit confused. “What are you doing here?”

“They said I had to be here.”

“Did they? That’s good.” He paused. “Is that good?”

He shook his head. “They say it is, but I don’t think so.”

“Oh? Why not?”

The man was a grown-up, no question. Yet, unlike most grown-ups that didn’t have any responsibility towards him, he seemed genuinely interested in getting the answer to the question, even though it was a simple one.

“Because they’re gonna cut me open in the morning,” he answered, simply. It was true, after all.

“Hm. Not much to cut, is there?” the man questioned. That was a strange response, wasn’t it?

“No.”

“So why are they going to cut you open? Can’t be for the meat.”

“Hospitals don’t carve you up for meat,” he said, dismissive. He wasn’t that gullible.

“They might.”

“They don’t.” He paused, thinking. “Not here, at least. Might do somewhere else. Never read about that. I don’t like reading about hospitals.”

The man smiled. “You just need the right material. Butchers used to have cleaner floors than doctors, for one thing. And there’s this wonderful tradition, well, I say wonderful – “ He paused, seeming to collect himself. “I’m on Earth, aren’t I?”

“Yes. Shouldn’t you be?” he asked, frowning.

“No, not really.” The man turned around and seemed to address the back of the wardrobe. “Why have we come here, old girl? We need to be elsewhere. You know that.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Hm? Oh, just my TARDIS.” He didn’t explain what that was. “Why are they cutting you open, then?”

“They’re gonna stick a lump of metal inside my chest.”

“Whatever for?” He almost sounded offended.

“Because my heart’s not working.”

“Clearly it _is,_ or you’d be – “the man said, his hands made large gestures that made no sense.

“Not working _properly,”_ he said, frustrated. “It works and then suddenly it doesn’t, not like it should. Then I can’t breathe, and I can’t see and it’s all…all wrong!” He was almost shouting at the end, tears in his voice. Worried, he stopped to listen. Nobody seemed to have heard, thankfully.

The man stilled at that and seemed to really look at him. The eyes grew warmer, yet sadder, that sense of age settling more firmly on him.

“It’s not wrong,” he said, voice gone soft. He didn’t seem to mean it dismissively.

“It is! They say I have a,” he said, then paused. He hesitated for only a moment. It felt easier to tell this strange man standing halfway inside a closet than it had almost anybody else. “They say I have a heart condition. I was born with it, but it didn’t manifest until now, they say.”

“Did they say what that meant?”

“No. Grown-ups think they protect you by not telling you. As if it goes away if you pretend it isn’t there.”

“Ah.” The man made an odd face then scanned the room. “That your bed over there? Good. Gotta just check something, I’ll be right there.”

He frowned, disbelieving. On the other hand, the man had just been standing in a wardrobe that shouldn’t have room for him. Anyway, he wouldn’t be worse off than he was now if the man disappeared again.

So, he did as he was told. While he did so, the man stepped further into the wardrobe, seeming to confirm his claim. A few moments later, he was back and stepped all the way out of the wardrobe, closing the door behind him.

“Right, then,” he said, bouncing up onto the bed. “So, you’ve got a heart that plays games that aren’t very nice, and now they want to give you another one, have I got that right?”

He nodded. “It’s not a real heart and I…I don’t want it.”

“Oh? Why not?”

He bit his lip, the worries he hadn’t thought about in a bit suddenly flooding back. “I don’t want to be a robot!”

“Are they going to make you into one?” Once again, a question which would’ve been mocking coming from another adult sounded sincere from him.

“They’re giving me a fake heart because mine doesn’t work! That’s the first step, isn’t it? I don’t want one. They say I need one, but I don’t want it. I don’t! I don’t want to be cut open, it hurts and…and they’re going to cut me open again later when the battery runs out. I don’t want to run on batteries! I’m a boy, not a Duracell bunny.”

The man just looked at him as he spoke, not saying anything. His expression was earnest, serious, like the doctors when they brought unpleasant news, but not worrying, somehow.

“They won’t make you a robot,” he said at last. “That’s not where they start when they want to make you a robot.”

He wanted to ask where they did start, then, but the man continued talking, and he’d been brought up not to interrupt.

“You’ve been operated on before, though, because you know it hurts and that goes away. That’s not what you’re really worried about.” He paused, then smiled. It was a soft, understanding smile. “I see.”

“See what?”

“What you’re worried about. No, what you’re scared of.”

The man then reached out and grabbed hold of his hand. He tried to pull it away but though he looked relatively skinny, the man wasn’t weak.

His hand was brought up to the man’s chest, but it wasn’t quite in the area where he knew the heart to be. When it was pressed against the shirt, though, he could feel the steady beat of a heart beneath it. In a strange way, it felt reassuring to have that sure rhythm going underneath his palm.

Then it was moved towards the right and down a bit. There was another heart beating there, beating at the same pace as the first one. It wasn’t just an echo of the first, either. Hearts didn’t echo like that.

He looked up at the man, who was smiling down at him.

“People don’t have two hearts.”

“You do,” the man countered. “Or you will soon, anyway. But you see, you don’t turn into a robot by having two hearts.”

“Who says you’re not?” he asked, sitting back.

“Who says I’m not?” the man echoed, sounding decidedly offended by the suggestion. “I should feel insulted! I’m not a robot!”

“You’re not human, either. Humans don’t have two hearts that beat. We only get one from birth.”

“So did I. But you’re right. I’m not human. I’m an alien.”

That seemed reasonable. “Okay. But if you didn’t have two hearts from birth, how come you have two now? Was your heart faulty, too?”

“Sort of, yes. It’s a long story, really. But the point is, now that I have two, both are infinitely stronger because they work together. When one’s feeling a bit under the weather, hey, presto, the other’s ready to take up the slack. It’s very useful. In a lot of situations.”

He thought about that information, frowning in concentration. Put like that, it didn’t sound quite as scary as it had done.

“It’ll be like that for me, too?” he asked.

“Yes. Even more so because yours is going to be renewed every few years, too. So, you see, you’ll always have two good hearts to help you out. That’s not bad, is it?”

“I suppose not.” He went quiet for a bit. Then he looked up.

“Can I hug you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to say thank you, but my mum says it’s rude to hug strangers without permission.”

“Really? She’s got some odd ideas, your mum. Appreciation should always be welcomed.” The man spread his arms wide. “Well, go on, then. I’m not going to hang around all night, you know.”

He smiled. “I know.”

And he did. Somehow, he knew this meeting with the strange man, the alien with two hearts, a bowtie and tardes, whatever that was, would be a brief one. But that was alright. He wasn’t scared about getting two hearts anymore. Not really. If you got to be a grown-up like that when you had two hearts, it sounded like a lot of fun.

He shuffled forward on the bed, so he could give the man a hug. “Thank you,” he whispered into the tweed jacket, meaning it like he’d rarely meant something before in his short life.

“You’re very welcome.” The hug was returned.

When he pulled back, he thought he saw some wetness in the man’s eyes. That couldn’t be right, though – why would the man cry?

“You never told me a name.”

“No? Well, neither did you. Turnabout is fair play.”

“True.” A pause. “Are you going to leave now?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so. Don’t want the nurses telling me off for parking my TARDIS in their closet.”

“Wardrobe.”

“Whatever. Anyway, you get some sleep now. We don’t want poor results from your extra heart just because you didn’t sleep, do we?”

He pouted at that but dutifully got back under the covers. “Can I wait until I see you leave?” he asked.

The man got up. “Won’t be much _to_ see, seeing as I parked pretty inconspicuously for a change. Don’t quite know how I…anyway, no, you can’t. You can go to sleep, young man, is what you can do.”

With that, he turned and strode back towards the wardrobe, opening the door and closing it again without looking back once.

Shortly after the door shut, there was that strange sound he’d heard when the man had arrived. He listened as it started and slowly faded away, leaving absolutely no evidence behind that the man had been there in the first place.

No evidence except within his chest and his mind. There it would stay forever, so he hoped.

He felt ready to get his new heart. The man was right; two hearts were better than one.

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone is interested, ICD stands for Implantable Cardioverter Defibrilator, and it does indeed have batteries that need to be changed when it's used up. They're working on a rechargeable one, though. :)
> 
> Feedback is loved and treasured, especially on this, and especially if the criticism is constructive.


End file.
